Devon coast shall stimulate any one else to the enjoyment of the cheap and healthy pleasures which are so bountifully provided for all who have the desire to partake of them.

Since the foregoing was written I am informed that the railway scheme has failed, owing to the opposition of the Torquay and Dartmouth people-jealous, as we may well suppose them to be, of the rivalry which a new town would cause to their interests. In a commercial point of view, this is to be regretted; but surely it is well to keep some favoured spots sacred from the incursions of tourists and would-be botanists, who carry off everything that takes their fancy, leaving nothing in exchange but empty ginger beer bottles, broken egg shells, orange peel, and paper bags giving evidence of having been exploded with a loud report, which, in some society, is considered an appropriate termination to a picnic entertainment. Let us therefore hope that, in this case at least, “Whatever is is right!"

NOTICE. It has been deemed expedient to add a short account of Kingsbridge and its vicinity to the graphic sheets of "Myrtles and Aloes"; the following supplementary pages, under the title of "KINGSBRIDGE," have therefore been furnished by Mr. Francis Young, lately a resident among us, and a native of this town. The illustrations are from the clever and facile pencil of Miss Tregelles.-The Publisher.

KINGSBRIDGE.

CHAPTER I.

A ROUND-ABOUT CHAPTER.

In the first chapter of "Myrtles and Aloes" cursory mention has been made of a town in the extreme south of Devon known by the name of Kingsbridge to Rowland Hill and his myrmidons of the Post Office, the inhabitants thereof, and all persons interested therein, directly or indirectly, by one or other of the countless ties that serve to attach every member of the human race more closely to some particular locality than to another.

It is of this town that the ruthless and unrelenting publisher of the "Salcombe Sketch Book," metaphorically seizing me by the collar and pinning me into a corner, from which I have no escape, has demanded a descriptive chapter as a supplementary appendage to the preceding lively pages, which glow with life-like descriptions of the wonders of the shore, lanes, banks and hedges, highways and byeways, that encompass and radiate from Salcombe in all directions, undique et passim.

Perhaps a reader (if readers ever do soliloquize over a book, which I very much doubt) will, in language and mood befitting that burly bear with heart of sterling gold, "the great Lexicographer," as Miss Pinkerton delighted to style him, snarlingly carp and gird at me, suggesting that I am an impudent dog, and, like Captain Macheath, "a bold man" to add the coarse free dashes of my verbiage to the pretty pre-raphaëlesque word paint

ings of the accomplished lady who has treated of the rural beauties and sea-side glories of Salcombe with eloquence enough, one would think, to make even Peter Bell himself turn botanist, geologist, phytologist, et omne quod exit in ist. Reader! I acknowledge the impeachment. Wincing under your gimlet-like glance, which betokens anything but favourable criticism of pages to come, I decidedly cry Peccavi. To the lady I take off my hat, and in humility pray pardon for my presumption: to yourself, my thoughts recurring to the pages of that Latin grammar which was so skilfully and indelibly ground into me at the Grammar School, Kingsbridge, I groan Parce mihi! to both I say, heap Pelion on Ossa of reproach on Mr. G. P. Friend, for has he not pulled me neck and ears into this scrape? He can, however, bear sufficient for himself and for me, to whom remaineth yet this consolatory knowledge that he is a gallant Volunteer, slow to defy, yet skilled to defend; which gives me, his scribe, courage to tread on my way rejoicing, and comforted by the knowledge that, if accidentally I raise a storm about my ears, it is around his auricular organs that the wind and war of words must rave and dash.

Why the town was called Kingsbridge nobody knows, not even Risdon or Polwhele, Bryce or Dr. Oliver, my worthy schoolmate, the professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford, or any other authority great in Devonshire antiquarian lore: I must not add that nobody cares, for I myself must confess to a strong craving for that piece of knowledge. Perchance, in time, the mystery will be unveiled by the discovery of an old chronicle, laboriously written and illuminated by a monk of Buckfastleigh, setting forth how sundry dwellers in the ville some thousand years since seeing the Saxon monarch of the day, while making a progress through the western part of his dominion, standing dubiously on the muddy edge of the morass through which the brook Dod slowly oozed on its way to ocean, leaped with Raleigh-like gal

lantry into the slush, and standing obverse to reverse with bended backs, after the manner of urchins at leap-frog, bridged the dank quagmire, and so gave passage to the monarch, sans soiled shoes and hose, into his loyal town, to be by royal decree hereafter known by the name of Kyngysbrygge. And here, Mr. Friend, you should insert a graphic portraiture of the performance, the actors therein having dislocated necks and arms and legs, after the manner of saints and heroes pictured in monkish missals and the illustrated chronicles of early times.

The parish of Kingsbridge is one of the smallest, if not indeed the least, of the many parishes of Devonshire: its whole superficial content is about two or three and thirty acres. The town is built on a dorsal ridge of land, sloping on the west to a rivulet, which separates it from the parish of West Alvington, and on the east to the stream Dod, which divides it from the neighbouring parish of Dodbrooke. A stranger sojourning awhile in Kingsbridge at the King's Arms, an excellent hotel, under the careful guardianship of Mr. Robert Foale, who grows his own lemons for punch and other delightful acidulated alcoholic compounds, hateful to declamatory teetotallers as scarlet to bellowing and iracund bull, would, on emerging from that good house of entertainment for man and beast, find himself on a level part of the street a little above the centre of the same, which runs nearly due north and south, and is called, in common with the chief streets of a large proportion of English towns, Fore Street: looking to his right, he will see the whole extent of the town to the north, terminated by a double toll bar, whereat, under the authority of the Turnpike Trust, who make a very nice per-centage on their investment, to the detriment and disgust of Her Majesty's liege subjects, travellers are despoiled and eased of sundry small coin by an Arguseyed janitor previous to proceeding either on the road leading to Loddiswell and the Kingsbridge Road Station, or on that which runs into it at right angles, passing the newly-built parsonage

house, and forming the high way to Aveton Gifford, Modbury, and Plymouth.

If he be inclined to get an appetite for his dinner, and do justice to the savoury roast and boiled provided by the host of the King's Arms, he cannot do better than take a morning walk towards this end of the town, and stroll along the Plymouth road; a couple of miles, up hill and thorough collar work all the way, will bring him to Churchstow, the vicar of which holds ecclesiastical sway over Kingsbridge also, under the style of Vicar of Churchstowcum-Kingsbridge. He will not perhaps be particularly pleased with the appearance of Churchstow village, which is far from prepossessing, but he will be amply repaid for his long climb by the many pretty peeps of the estuary that he will gain on his return at various turnings of the winding road. About a mile or less from Kingsbridge he should turn to his left, and, passing an old barn, make his way into a long rough pass, known, I believe, from its sequestered position, as Love Lane: certainly the ups and downs of this deep rutted cart path would tend to tumble a fond pair into delightful proximity at every step, and make the walk a sort of oak and ivy business, not for you stout and respectable visitor in broadcloth, but for Strephon and Phyllis, Corydon and Daphne, from the town, who pair off to these secluded resorts about seven o'clock of a summer's eve, and build castles in the air of the bliss of their coming happiness-realised, alas! in how few cases, as wedded life doth often sadly witness. After quitting the Plymouth road for about two hundred yards or more, turning again to his right, and treading gingerly for his corns' sake, he will enter this, to him, via dolorosa, but if his name be Sam, he may appeal to himself in Christy Minstrel phraseology, for here he will get the best view of the estuary that can possibly be found, the land-locked expanse of water looking at full tide, like a glassy lake, broken perhaps by the paddle-wheels of the busy Queen, with the dark woods of Halwell fringing its margin in the distance, the